Edit: I read through this again and found a ton of weird typos that I missed the first time. Also, I apparently only spell O'Neill right half the time so I fixed that, too. Please excuse the awkward lengthiness of this chapter. As well as the Carter/Riker thing going on. I doubt seriously that will continue. But Riker has to be Riker.

Chapter 3: Not in that Order

Daniel slumped on the couch in the "ready room," head in his hand, while Sam did her best to explain what happened. Teal'c stood aside next to Jack. Besides the captain, Data, the artificial intelligence with amber eyes; Commander Riker, the man with the beard; and Deanna Troi, an attractive woman with a mess of curly black hair and black—totally black eyes, had joined them to hear the tale.

Troi gazed at each of them pensively until Sam had finished her spiel. Jack sighed and waited for the accusations of insanity. Hell, Jack would have said that himself. This was crazy. "I sense no deception from any of them, Captain," Troi said quietly, her eyes sad as she looked at them. "They are telling the truth. They really are lost."

"Well, it's definitely the most interesting story I've heard…" the captain pondered, standing from his seat and tugging at the edges of his shirt. "Do you have any idea how it happened?" he asked while he walked over to a hole in the wall and told it, "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." When it appeared in the wall he smiled and held his mug up to the others as though in celebration. "My compliments to Mr. LaForge."

Riker smiled and nodded. "Better than a potted plant, sir?"

"Indeed," Picard agreed.

"The best thing I can come up with," Sam said tentatively, "is that we somehow… switched realities."

"And went to the future," Jack put in, looking at the stars flying past the singular window in the room. The captain shook his head, either in pity or disbelief. "And we have no way to get back now, Captain."

"Jack!" Sam hissed.

"Colonel O'Neill is correct, Major Carter," Teal'c put in. "Without the Stargate, we have no way of returning home to our own reality and our own time. We are trapped."

"I do apologize for that," the captain said, sipping his tea as though he wasn't sorry at all, Jack thought. "The Enterprise was coming apart at the seams. I would have liked to keep the Iconian gateway intact, as well, but not at the expense of over a thousand people on this ship as well as the hands of the Romulan ship."

All of them sat quietly for a while, probably all pondering the problem of what to do now. Data was obviously processing the information, since he had announced as much before he fell silent. "You're all from Earth, then?" Riker asked, maybe just to fill the silence. He leaned forward on one knee and stared at them, his expression telling how interested he was, unless he was good at lying with his expression. If that were true, Jack surmised, he would be an excellent poker-player.

"I am not," Teal'c answered.

"But the rest of us, yeah," Sam put in.

"Captain," Troi spoke up, smiling a little at Riker. "I think I know where he's going with this." Then she looked at Jack, Sam, and Daniel. "If you're all from Earth, it's perfectly possible your counterparts in this universe may have some descendants. We could look through the records." She smiled a large but sincere smile with incredibly clean teeth, Jack thought. He knew she was trying to be helpful, but Jack figured his past without the Stargate was only an indication of what his future was: boring, lonely, depressing.

He pulled himself out of his self-absorbed thoughts in time to see Daniel bury his face in his hands and Sam shrug.

"Not a bad idea, Counselor," Captain Picard agreed. "Even if we found some of your relatives, they would be far-removed and we aren't scheduled to go back to Earth for quite some time. In the meantime, we have to figure out what to do with you."

"Of course, we have many empty rooms on the lower decks; you could easily stay with us," Troi said.

"Naturally. We would be happy to have you," the captain agreed. "After all, it's by our doing that you can't go back to your own time." The captain spun the mug in his hand, studying it intensely before looking at Troi. "But we can't very well just have them bide their time here, Counselor. Doctor Jackson," he went on, looking squarely at Daniel. "You said something about your interest in archeology." Daniel nodded mutely, and the captain soldiered on. "Surely, you could work with some of Starfleet's experts on Iconia."

"Yes, Captain," Troi agreed enthusiastically. "Surely all of you have something you enjoy doing. You could definitely contribute here, to pass the time. It might make you feel more at home."

Jack noticed that she said nothing about the possibility of them ever getting home. "With all due respect," he muttered. "This isn't home."

"She's right, Jack," Daniel sighed finally, looking up from his continual staring at the red-carpeted floor. "For all we know, we could be here forever. We may as well get used to it." Jack glared at Daniel. Had everyone gone completely crazy?

"Though, of course, we hope we can find a way to get you home," Captain Picard put in. "Now, Teal'c, was it? Your… weapon was very interesting to us. We have never seen anything like it before; perhaps you would be interested in showing our scientists and security chief how it works and how you use it?"

Teal'c bowed his head in affirmation.

Sam was obviously very excited, "I would love to learn more about the technology that you have here. I'm a—was a very respected scientist back on Earth in the twenty-first century. If it's possible, I would like to get to work as soon as possible trying to figure out what got us here in the first place."

"We have facilities that would more than accommodate you," Captain Picard said. "And you, Colonel O'Neill?"

Jack shrugged and said, "Honestly, sir, the only thing that I'm good at is fishing."

"Fishing," the captain repeated, smiling a little. "Well, we can accommodate that, too. Commander Riker, our guests will require quarters near each other."

"I will see to it personally, sir," Commander Riker said with a nod as he stood.

"Thank you." Everyone in the room stood, except for Data who still seemed to be processing. "You are welcome to stay on the Enterprise for as long as you like. We kept you in our universe; it's only fair that we keep you comfortable at least. Our house, as they say, is your house."

Jack smiled sarcastically at him and shrugged saying, "Thanks, Captain." Sam elbowed him in the ribs none-too-kindly for it, but Jack didn't regret it at all. They were in one hell of a mess because of him and those Romulans, which Jack was beginning to suspect had absolutely nothing to do with the mythology-Romulan. Wouldn't Daniel be disappointed?

Riker led them out of the ready room and onto the bridge.

Jack hadn't noticed until now that Riker had been giving Sam a very strange look on-and-off through the session in the captain's ready room. Well, perhaps not "strange," since Jack was well-aware what it meant. He wasn't surprised when he lingered in her doorway a few minutes to talk to her after showing them their rooms.

They were boring and bland rooms, but at least Jack knew Teal'c would be happy with it. He liked the dark concrete rooms in the mountain back home…

"Now," Riker said to all of them. "We can go to Ten-Forward which is the lounge in the forward of the saucer section on deck 10. As the name suggests," he added with a smile. Sam smiled then, too, and Jack rolled his eyes. "Or I could bring you by the holodeck."

Before anyone could voice their own opinions, Jack tapped his hand on the doorjamb leading into his room. "I'm actually pretty beat, thanks."

"Yeah, me, too," Daniel said.

"It has been many hours since I engaged in Kelno'reem," Teal'c said. "I require candles."

"Oh," Riker looked confused and then went to show Teal'c how to get the "replicator" to give him candles. Sam was utterly fascinated by the replicator and would have had endless questions to ask about it had they not had to vacate Teal'c's room shortly thereafter so he could meditate.

Sam was interested in looking up her counterpart's family on Earth, so Riker showed them that, too. Each of the rooms was equipped with a little computer that looked like a laptop without a keyboard or a mouse. Riker spoke to it and it responded, like the replicator and the computer in the medical center. They found that the Sam of this universe, while doing nothing remarkable besides achieving an impressive rank in the Air Force and joining the astronaut program, had a family that lived all over the Earth and many on far-flung colonies. Many of her descendants were in Starfleet.

Daniel and Jack had less-intriguing stories. Daniel had been a failure of an academic in this universe, as he might have been in theirs, had he not been right about the most idiotic theory there was. There was very little about him except that he lived alone, traveling the globe looking for proof for his bizarre theories. Jack's family history was even less-impressive. After a short marriage seemingly destined to end in tragedy, Jack lived alone on a little lake with no fish in it about a day's drive from Colorado Springs.

Riker seemed disappointed with the results, but Sam was glad to see that most of her descendants, at least in this universe, led very interesting lives, even if they weren't all that important in the grand scheme of things. "Josephine Campell," Sam read one of the names. "She works on a starbase?"

"Looks like Starbase 111," Riker agreed.

"Cool."

"Cool?" Riker asked, one eyebrow raised.

"At least I know," Jack broke in, "that even in another universe where everything is completely different, I am still the same."

"At least we know that," Daniel agreed sarcastically. "I'm going to my room." He left Sam's room and went across the hall.

"Maybe that was a bad idea," Riker allowed.

"No, he'll be fine. It's just been a bad day," Sam assured Riker pleasantly, even though Jack was sure her words should have been anything but pleasant.

"Bad last couple of years for Daniel," Jack reminded, and headed out of the room. He thought for a moment that he didn't want to leave Sam alone with the commander, but then he figured that Sam was a grown-up and could take care of herself. She could probably take care of herself better than Daniel could, he considered with a wry smile. It was obviously true in this universe.

Instead of going to his room, Jack went to Daniel's door and pressed in the button for the doorbell that Riker had showed them. Daniel would have to say on the inside whether he could come in or not, but he eventually did, and Jack stepped inside and watched the door close behind him on its own. Like magic, Jack thought with a smile.

"I need a door like that at home," he commented.

Daniel slouched in a chair, staring blankly across the room at the bank of windows that allowed a plain sight of the nothingness outside. Jack's was next door, which meant that Jack and Daniel had window-rooms. They could watch the foreign stars zoom past their window while they pondered the possibility and reality of life without the Stargate, without Earth, without hope of a way home.

Jack didn't know what to say, now, since Daniel obviously hadn't anything to say about the door. He guessed there was nothing to say, nothing of importance. But, then, Jack never said anything of importance. Except now he actually had something to say. "We have one advantage…" Jack pondered, tapping at the controls for the replicator. The replicator, Riker had informed them, made alcohol-free beer. Stupid idea, but better than nothing. He asked for two beers, and handed one to Daniel. He took it without looking at it.

"I'm so different, Jack, without the Stargate…" Daniel said before Jack could expound upon his singular thought. Jack tasted the fizzy brown liquid, and found it terrible. Definitely not worth the lack of alcohol. Jack put it back into the replicator's cavity. "Without the Stargate…" Daniel was saying, "I was nothing. I was never right. No aliens. Never met Sha're. Never married."

"Never met you," Jack filled in for himself. "I guess a few things changed. But I was a selfish old bastard without the Stargate as well as I was with it."

Daniel chuckled darkly. "We're never getting home, are we?"

Jack shrugged. Things looked grim from here, sure. But, still, they had that one advantage. "Iconians," he pondered. "They're basically Ancients, right?" Daniel shrugged, but nodded even though he seemed to be unconvinced that they were. That was good enough for Jack. "There, you see? You know more about the Iconians than anyone in this universe. We have the advantage of our universe."

"I guess you're right, but Jack!" Daniel objected. "It would take a lifetime for me to figure out how to read Iconian. Much less figure out where another gate is. Not to mention what Sam said. We can't get home without knowing how we got here. We can't get back if we can't somehow reverse whatever did this in the first place."

"We'll leave that to Sam," Jack answered. "She'll figure out how to get us home. But, Daniel. You have to find the gate."

Daniel pinched his lips together and rubbed at his eyes with one hand. "Jack…" he whispered, but Jack didn't let him finish.

"We'll figure out what happened, find a gate, and get home," Jack said. "Not necessarily in that order."